


Land of Wrath and Compassion

by Mercale



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comfort, Dream Bubbles, Gen, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercale/pseuds/Mercale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes death changes you, or at least it does when the dead are bound to wander forever from dream bubble to dream bubble. Sometimes it makes you sorry for the actions of your life. Sometimes it makes you find new purposes that you would have ignored while you were living. And sometimes it makes you take actions that you never would have in life, even if you should have somehow found the courage to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Land of Wrath and Compassion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tavidan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tavidan).



> Tumblr user Tavidan was one of my Homestuck Secret Santa 2012 giftees. At this point I’ve heard nothing from them, so I’m just going to go and put this fic up anyway. This is my first time working with Tavros as a PoV character, but I like the way everything turned out. When I first got the prompt I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but I’m in love with how it turned out. One of the settings of the story is based on the art of Tumblr user ushauz.

Eridan Ampora was pathetic.

It wasn't even the slightest kind of exaggeration. Eridan was pathetic, though not in the ways or for the reasons that he thought he should be. For some reason he thought he was supposed to be pitiable because he was a seadweller, because he was 'smart,' because he was a noble close to the heiress, because because because. As if any of that was a reason to pity a troll. No, they were reasons to hate them, not to mention his attitude, his genocidal tendencies, his conceit, even his obsession with getting himself a matesprit.

And Tavros Nitram pitied him.

There was, one of Kanayas he'd met since awakening in the bubbles, likely something wrong with his pan. Eridan wasn't the kind of troll that was worth pitying. He'd apparently gone on a homicidal spree on the meteor the trolls had been stranded on some meteor in the Veil. Managed to kill Feferi in his attempt to kill Sollux, destroyed Kanaya's matriorb, and almost killed the alpha Kanaya herself. In the end he'd been put down by said Kanaya, newly reawoken as a rainbow drinker. In the end he'd given up all chance of hope and tried to take his comrades down with him.

Not that Tavros saw it that way. Or at least the Tavros he was. He was one of the many earlier deaths. A Tavros who had passed on back before Karkat had even managed to create his agreement with Jack Noir. Killed by a stone ogre because he had given in to Vriska's egging on and tried to take things on with his weapons rather than making them his friends with his power. It was pretty pathetic, but at least the bubbles had been here, at least they let him live as he remembered himself, and so his legs worked here, as he wandered through the near and far of the worlds presented by the bubbles.

It was while Tavros was wandering through a memory of the land of brains and fire that the change suddenly happened, that he was certain he was about to run across a Eridan. The landscape of burning brains was giving way to towering pillars, ancient structures, and soaring, winged creatures that were fixtures only of the land of wrath and angels. It was a potentially dangerous place to have someone remembering. Half of the instances of their game session had found Eridan's genocidal complex causing him to attack the angels and they were murderous towards the trolls. The other half they had taken him under their wings, so to speak, and managed to mellow Eridan out a bit. Not that Tavros had ever seen any of the latter memories himself. He'd heard the others mention them, heard they meant Eridans that hadn't been pale dumped by Feferi, who had learned the value of working together, had understood the importance of all of the others as the only trolls left in the universe. Problem was those usually occurred only when a lot of people had died early in the session. Like Tavros had.

That didn't mean he was going to run any risks anyway. The rule of a wrath and angels encounter was to stay under cover and find an exit as quickly as possible. Not that you could ever go back the way you came either. Bubbles came together, overlapped, and came apart. Already when he looked behind him there was nothing left of the burning landscapes that he'd come from. The memory was gone. Or maybe it was just another part of Eridan's memory. After all, Tavros had met a rather bitter Sollux once who had lost to Eridan in a duel in his land.

But that was hardly the concern for now, because there was another flash of angel wings darting past far overhead. Maybe ghosts couldn't die a second time—would double death even be a thing—but that didn't mean Tavros wanted to test the idea. Instead his eyes started to dart around, seeking some kind of protection. Right now he was moving below the high arches so prominent in the landscape, which were really no protection. The angels that could get under the overhangs, which meant these were just fancy ghost-murder corridors. No, the only thing that screamed potential safety was a large, extravagant building in the distance. It could be a good place to lay low and plan his escape from this dream bubble.

Getting there was a bit of a problem, though. There was rarely a moment where there wasn't the shadow of some angel in view, either in the distance or flying overhead. But he had to risk it, didn't he? The other option was sitting around and risking injury, if not double death. In the end it took him nearly three minutes to psyche himself up enough to move out from a pillar he'd hidden behind. Once he was moving, though, it was all it took for Tavros to start moving for the distant structure. Whenever there was a likely angel shadow—which was pretty often—Tavros tired to find some cover, to keep himself outside of the notice of the ghostly creatures. Which meant that it took almost an hour for him to get from his hiding place to the building he'd picked out to hide in. Still, he made it there in time enough, and it took only a small push to get the door open wide enough for him to slip through without bumping his horns.

The door closed behind him softly the second he moved away from it. Part of his pan said it was for the best, because leaving it open even the slightest bit would mean the angels could know where he'd gone. Then again, who was to say that the door would open back up? Well, what had happened had happened, and since his intention was to stay safe in this place for a while, what was the point in worrying about it? There were always other things to worry about after all.

Like what this place was? Tavros let his eyes flow around the interior of the room he was in, and it was all he could do not to gasp in wonder. There were all the signs of the standard styles of the land of wrath and angels in the dark walls, the high ceiling, and the multitude of arches. But there were key differences as well. When he looked up he was met with the sight of a window made out of hundreds of thousands of small, colored pieces of glass held together by some dark threads. The image they presented was beautiful: a full and over-embellished version of the wings of the angels, or maybe of the Prince of Hope. They shone down at him, filled with light like Tavros had never known, and surrounded by a variety of images: of a shadow figure in a purple cape, of a duel of red and blue and white, of various scenes that Tavros understood had happened in the course of the alpha adventure. A piece of art dedicated to Eridan.

Below the colorful glass ceiling was another work of art, a large statue that, when one really paid attention, could only be of one of the terrible angels outside of this place. Its serpentine body and four wings were carved from some beautiful, pale white stone, shot through with veins of deep black. The tail of the creature was wrapped around a large pool of water, into which more water flowed in streams from small faces shaped like suns. The only thing that ruined the beautiful structure was the fact that one of the wings had a rather large chunk missing from it, one shaped so oddly that Tavros didn't think the lack had been part of some puzzle on the planet. No, it looked more like someone had attacked the thing in anger or frustration.

And that someone, Tavros could easily see, was sitting on a small area in the middle of the fountain, where the serpentine body of the statue curled around itself before rising up, creating a small platform. It could only be Eridan, with the way he was curled up in his the trade mark violet cape.

It would be easier, Tavros knew, to just leave now. About a hundred times easier. The problem was, Tavros couldn't. Looking at Eridan there, curled up as if to shut out the world, 'safe' in the arms of one of the most dangerous creatures in their session, it was just too pitiful.

“Go away,” Eridan's voice growled out, not even missing the wavering quality.

“How did you know I was here?”

“The doors ain't exactly the most quiet things in this memory,” he snapped, face still hidden in his cloak.

Which was a good enough point. Still, Tavros wasn't going out there right now. Not with all those angels still so fresh in his mind. So there was really only one other option: advancing. Nervously he shuffled forward, worried that Eridan would be quicker to attack him than even the angels were. After all, they only attacked because they were angry. Eridan might attack just because Tavros was a 'land dwelling lowblood.'

“Go away,” Eridan repeated, with more force this time. “I didn't fucking ask you to come bother me.”

“I didn't ask to end up in your bubble,” Tavros pointed out. “Things like that just happen out here.”

“Yeah, I'm sure it fucking does. That doesn't mean I have to accept it.”

Well, actually it did, but Tavros wasn't going to point that out. Obviously Eridan was a bit... hot under the collar as it was. Normally that might have made Tavros back down, but from what he'd seen, fighting in dream bubbles really didn't matter. Injuries didn't have a way of sticking as they did when people were alive.

“You okay?”

At last Eridan looked up, either because of Tavros's persistence, or just shock over the persistence this lowblood scum in daring to bother him. Yet, when Tavros met Eridan's eyes, he saw something very different there. Not annoyance, but definitely shock. Just not the angry kind. The pure disbelief kind. The 'did you really just say that' kind.

“What do you care?” the seadweller asked, sounding half afraid of the answer.

So may potential answers. Half-truths like being curious. Lies like wanting to know what it took to get a seadweller to leave him alone. And, the least feasible answer of them all, the truth. Wanting to know because he genuinely wanted to know. He wanted to help. To see the seadweller through his problems. Because no one as sure of their superiority like Eridan would ever put up with a lowblood admitting pale intentions towards them.

“Well?” Eridan demanded, shifting so that he was completely facing Tavros. That was when Tavros saw it. The ugly gash oozing violet that cut across the whole of Eridan's torso. There was only one thing that could be: the chainsaw wound that had killed him. Apparently in his afterlife Eridan had refused to give up the wound. Or maybe he hadn't understood that he didn't have to have the injuries he didn't want to have. There was even the chance that Eridan had only recently awoken, and didn't even know any better.

“Because I do,” Tavros said at last, ignoring the look that was half nervous and half furious as he advanced on the fountain.

Eridan, maybe even sensing what was going to happen next, tried to back away from Tavros. Not that it did him any good. The stone behind him kept Eridan from really getting anywhere, and he didn't even seem to notice that until Tavros had already clambered over the edge of the fountain and into the water.

“Tav, what are you even doing?”

“Well, someone has to see to that wound since you haven't. Let me. I've got lots of...”

“Why would I even want a lowblood like you to...”

“Shut up,” Tavros found himself saying, and as he saw the shock on Eridan's face he was certain his own mirrored it. When had he ever gotten the bravery to talk back to a seadweller?

No, it wasn't that he was talking back to a seadweller, it was that he was talking back to Eridan. For some reason, that made an important difference. That made ALL of the difference.

“How dare you...”

Tavros managed to shuffle his way across the fountain just in time to smack Eridan as he started to speak. Well, maybe it was meant to be a smack, but in truth it really wasn't. It was gentle, pitiful, it was...

It was a pap.

Tavros Nitram had just papped Eridan Ampora.

There was a very real chance that this was the sign of a bubble apocalypse. Not that it really occurred to Tavros right now. Right now the only thing that was really going through his head was just how wide Eridan's blank white eyes were. There was shock there, but not so much as there was in Tavros. After all, Eridan was only caught off guard by the action. Tavros was caught off guard by the fact that he'd taken it. Mostly because he'd thought of taking it before, but he'd never had the courage. Never thought it was worth it. Never...

“Tav...”

“Shoosh,” Tavros insisted, not ready just yet to put what had happened into words. Amazingly, Eridan listened. Even scooted over a bit. Without prompting Tavros clambered up beside him, and the pair shuffled around to accommodate each other as best they could. Then, utterly silent, Eridan carefully shifted to lay his head down in Tavros's lap, and Tavros ran his fingers through Eridan's hair in as soothing of a gesture as possible.

They sat there, together, in silence for a long time. Which was more than Tavros ever could have asked for.


End file.
